First Year Explained
by Ryu-Tsui-Sen
Summary: Dumbledore explains to Harry just how effective his defense of the philosophers stone really was. May later include my rationalisation of commonly believed canon plot holes


I don't own Harry Potter.

**Explanations**

Dumbledore looked at Harry in Dismay.

"You actually think I would risk the lives of my students, not to mention possibly the most powerful magical object in existence, in order to train you."

At Harry's nod Dumbledore started to get a bit angry and began his explanation.

"First of all, I am disappointed you think so little of me, I don't mind when strangers think ill of me but I had thought we were growing into a rather close mentor relationship. Allow me to explain to you just how hard the traps were.

First off there was the cerebrus, which I am sure you are aware took Voldemort almost the whole year to get past. The Cerebrus are extremely rare and make such good guard dogs because they will only stand down on one command. A command that has to be trained into the dog from birth. Hagrid trained Fluffy to only stand down in the case of music being played. It wouldn't matter if you gave the dog meat, toys or petted it, he would ignore everything if anyone made an attempt on the door with out music being played. Hmmm I say first defence but really it is the second. The first defence was an enchantment on the whole of the gauntlet. Once you entered a room you could only exit under specific conditions. In the case of Fluffy's room you could only either leave the way you came, or play music and leave through the trapdoor. Any other strategy would kill you; this is why Voldemort didn't simply kill Fluffy. This sort of conditional spell is unbreakable because all anyone needs to escape death is in the room with them and the enchantment is easily ended by anyone once they have bested the final room. Thus Voldemort knew he had to fight his way through the obstacles. In this task you were in luck having befriended the cerebrus' trainer you were told how to best Fluffy.

The second task was both simple and complex. This will probably come as a surprise to you but most people do not know how to defend against devil's snare. It is a rare magical plant not generally found anywhere in Western Europe. Professor Sprout procured the plant specifically to guard the stone and because it is so simple and yet deadly then chose to use it as an example in her first year classes. Presumably because she assumed no first year would be after the stone and thus she was safe from accidentally revealing how to defeat her defence to a thief. I also imagine she was trying to garner interest in her subject by showing how it can be just as deadly as spells. Now what you probably don't know is that any attempt to magically cut devils snare results in exponential growth of the plant. Only your luck to have been a first year led to you knowing how to defeat the plant. None of the other children have learnt about it at all. So for a thief to pass our first two rooms they must so far have known enough about a rare magical creature to know they needed to get the stand down command for Fluffy from his trainer and secondly they need to get past a rare magical plant from another part of the world. Basically they needed a master of magical beasts and of herbology. Two specialties that do not often go together.

Now we move onto the third room. In this room Professor Flitwik had charmed both the brooms and the keys, and perhaps most importantly the room itself. Upon entering the room a broom was created for each participant. As you found three, Voldemort would have found 1. The broom was charmed to be slower than the keys, which in turn were charmed to hide the real key from the flyer. Further more the room was charmed to stop non-keyed in brooms from working. Thus any entrant had to be an exceptional flyer in order to trap the key, with the slower broom and keep it trapped without being distracted by the other keys. In this case you were exceptionally lucky, as Voldemort had damaged the correct key making it easier for you to see and catch. As a high calibre mage Voldemort himself would have been able to look for the correct aura around the key. Anyone else would have been left randomly hunting down keys. In other words in order to pass this room in its original state you had to be an exceptional flyer whom has developed mage sight. Mage sight is only developed by the very best charms masters. Yet another mastery needed to complete our gauntlet.

The fourth room was designed by professor McGonagal. In order to cross the room and leave you had to defeat the chess set. This doesn't sound to hard, until you find out that Minerva holds a title of grand master in the wizarding chess circuit. Your friend Ron truly is gifted to be able to defeat Professor McGonagal's chess set. As for the transfiguration itself. The chess set was made from a single stone that filled the room in its entirety. Your Professor transfigured it into the chess set; this means that any attempt to blast past the chess pieces would have resulted in the transfiguration ending and the offending party being reduced to a smear by the untransfigured boulder. As you may have noticed the chess pieces attacked if you tried to go around them, thus the only option was to play. While it is a trap set by a transfiguration Master it is actually a challenge set by a grand master of chess. In all modesty I am the only person alive skilled enough to perform the simultaneous untransfiguration and retransfiguration needed to pass that room without playing chess not even Voldemort at the height of his power could have done so. So in the end the only way across was to beat a grand master of chess.

The fifth room was a room of brute strength. Anyone entering had to disable a full-grown mountain troll with out direct magic. What this means is that magic could only be used on yourself. Before his accident with the vampires, and yes there really was a vampire accident it is just Voldemort was apparently there as well, Professor Quirrel was an expert troll wrangler. Even with the correct spells most wizards are not adept at hand to hand combat, even the more physically active ones are not usually adept enough to take on a mountain troll and win. Once again you were lucky here as Voldemort was in such a hurry he left the troll unconscious behind him, He could have easily awoken the troll as he left the room but he obviously did not expect to be in there long enough for pursuit to matter. So in order to cross this room in its original state you needed to know the correct physical enhancement spells, be a gifted hand-to-hand fighter and know enough about trolls to know how to knock one out.

The sixth room was a test in logic. This may seem easy to you and miss Granger but it is not so to anyone raised in the magical world where logic is often a hindrance. The only way out of that room was with the correct potion. The only way to find the correct potion was by solving a logic puzzle. I think what you need to understand here is why most wizards do not train in logic. As I said earlier logic is a hindrance in the magical world because magic ignores it. Muggleborns often have travel mastering floo travel because they expect that after all the spinning around they should be dizzy and as they try to correct they end up causing themselves problems. To a wizard this makes no sense, they walked into the fire and they walked out of the fire, why should what happened in the fire matter when you leave it. In other words wizards do not expect their actions in one world to translate back into the real world. Muggleborns insistence that actions have consequences confuses wizards. What goes up does not have to come down. It is this reliance on logic that stalls many a muggleborns rise in academic fields. For the higher levels of magic quite frequently do the opposite of things you have learnt in the lower levels of magic despite being in the same field. Thus anyone who reached Severus' challenge would be highly unlikely to be skilled at logic. Severus himself took the puzzle from a muggle puzzle book, and adapted it to his purpose. Finally the actual potion part, the two potions let you through the flames one forwards, one back. Then there were the poisons, which killed you, and finally the nettle wine, which attracted the flames to you, though you were not told that. So logic was the key here.

Finally we entered my room. Where the stone was in the mirror charmed to only be released to someone who wanted it, but didn't want to use it. Thus it could only really be taken by people wanting to protect it, or people hired to steal it who knew what it was and didn't want to use it. So in order for a single person to get past our protections they needed to be a master in creatures, who could convince a loyal friend of mine to tell them how to get past his pet, a master herbologist, a talented flyer with mage sight, a grand master of chess, a skilled troll wrangler and new enough to the magic world to still use and understand logic, oh and they couldn't want to use the stone. Needless to say this combination of skill is highly unlikely in a single person. None of the deatheaters could have beaten our gauntlet, and Voldemort himself couldn't either. In fact it was only with your unwitting help that he got as close to the stone as he did. On top of all this the gauntlet was at Hogwarts so a group of people couldn't get in and do the tasks together, meaning thieves had to be from Hogwarts itself or in addition to the previously mentioned talents they had to also be capable of infiltrating the school as entering without tripping the wards is nigh impossible, except as an animagus. Since we suspected Voldemort and the deatheaters as being after the stone our traps were sufficient, but in the unlikely event they hired the job out, they would need to find a thief who was: an animagus, a beast master, a master herbologist, a charms master (mage sight), a master flyer, a grand master of chess, a master troll wrangler, was new enough to magic to still use logic and knew what the stone was but didn't want to use it. Such a thief is unlikely to exist.

So no Harry, first year was not some training exercise I designed for you. It was a highly secure place for Nicolas to store his stone while he made the necessary arrangements for a safe place to destroy it. Now what else was it you thought I had done to "train" you?"

Dumbledore peered over his glasses and as a red faced Harry gathered the courage to ask for an explanation of his second year woes.

A/N I may or may not add to this story, but if I do it will likely be in the form of me explaining away canon "plotholes" that are often brought up. This one always got to me. That three children just happened to have the skills necessary does not mean that those skills would be found in a single adult wizard, and as the stone was at hogwarts it was unlikely anything other than a single wizard/witch would go after it. Please excuse any spelling errors I just ran a standard spellcheck and didn't bother to look up names etc. Anyway hope you enjoyed it.


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